Geek/Writer Rambles Ignorantly About Shit

Tshinanu Rambles – 25/03/2015 – Research

Before I start on the topic matter at hand, I’d like to declare with pride, that I’ve actually started writing. I mean, I write daily, but writing fiction if you catch my drift. Well, I sorta’ write fiction daily too. But you know what I mean, I’ve got the makings of a novel. Sure, it’s only a very small crumb of a pretty huge pie but eventually, it’ll be a whole thing, I hope. It also might never see the light of day beyond my OneDrive – unless someone chooses to exercise their deep web powers to hack it, though you won’t find any fappening material in it, I assure you -. The point is, it’s happening. We’re making progress.

Now onto what I wanted to talk about, it’s sort of related to the above. Whenever I get to writing, I have a tendency of trying to find excuses as to not to write, sometimes those excuses aren’t all that valid, other times they are but they’re excuses nonetheless, it generally boils down to, I need to outline and I need to do research, or hell, I need to read on writing. Unfortunately, I do this so often, I never actually get around to doing the actual writing.

Today’s perhaps an exception but it almost happened. I’m writing something starring a girl, halfway through her teens –I’m undecided on what exact age as of yet- so evidently, it’s not familiar territory. I have three sisters whom are all (or were all) around that age but nevertheless, I don’t often read from that point of you in prose. Sure, George R. R. Martin does it too, but I don’t think he’s the most reliable point of you, particularly when you’re considering the time period and fantastical world A Song of Ice and Fire is set in. Daenerys probably isn’t fucking a warlord twice (thrice?) her age in a 2015 first world metropolis. So there’s definitely a different mindset going on.

I think reading Batgirl/Silk/Spider-Gwen is definitely helping a tad. And books like Divergent and Hunger Games, as much as I’m not a big fan of the storytelling itself, are great points of references too. But if I’m going to do something, I need to do it right. So I’ve done my large –small- bit of writing and I’m going to jump into some research now, I mean, you can’t necessarily look up “how girls act” and god I’d feel like such a nerd doing that. It’s more so, how do you approach things from a perspective that’s not necessarily your own.

I don’t even know where I was going with this. The point of the matter is, for once I’m doing some post-writing research instead of using it as an excuse. Researching isn’t bad; just don’t let it get in the way of your writing.

Also, despite feeling the urgent need to delete the folder containing these ~500 words of prose, don’t do it. I did it. Thank god for the recycling bin though. Brought it right back. I feel a tad better now.